Dane has won renown for taking on tech firms, upsetting Donald Trump in the process Margrethe Vestager, the high-flying Danish politician who has taken on Apple, Amazon and Google, will stay in charge of Europe’s competition rules and take charge of EU digital policy. Appointed to an unprecedented second term as the EU’s competition commissioner, Vestager will also oversee EU digital policy and will have the job title of “executive vice-president, Europe fit for the digital age”.

The retailer reported a pre-tax loss of €493m despite sales rising by 11.6% to €28bn Amazon received more than €200m in tax credits last year that it can deduct from future bills for its European business, despite efforts by authorities in Brussels to ensure the company pays more tax. Amazon Europe, which is based in Luxembourg and aggregates the billions of pounds of sales the retailer makes from individual countries across the continent, received the €241m credit after reporting a pre-tax loss of €493m in 2018.

US tech giants’ £280m outlay drives British production sector to record high in 2018 Netflix and Amazon almost doubled the amount spent on British-made TV shows last year to £280m as making big-budget shows such as The Crown and Good Omens drove the UK production sector to a record high. The filming spree helped drive the sector to more than £3bn in annual revenues for the first time, according to Pact, the body that represents UK independent TV production companies.

Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, Danone and others take out full-page ad in New York Times addressed to business leaders The bosses of some of the world’s biggest companies, including Apple and Amazon, have been told to put the planet before profits – not by environmental campaigners but by other multinationals, including Danone’s US arm, and a unit of Unilever. A group of more than 30 American business leaders, including the heads of outdoor clothing brand Patagonia, The Body Shop owner Natura, Ben & Jerry’s (part of Unilever) and Danone’s US business, have taken the extraordinary step of taking out a full-page ad in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times to champion a more ethical way of doing business. The advert is aimed at members of the influential

Use of plastic envelopes branded a ‘major step backwards’ in fight against pollution Amazon has been criticised by environmental groups and customers after introducing a range of plastic packaging that cannot be recycled in the UK. While supermarkets and other retailers have been reducing their use of

Small rise confounds City forecasts as even troubled department stores record increase Online spending boosted UK retail sales last month, while department stores notched up their first increase this year, as consumers shrugged off Brexit fears. The quantity of goods bought rose 0.2% in July, boosted by the annual Amazon Prime Day,

Digital video continues to power entertainment growth with gaming spend slightly up The streaming revolution has notched up another milestone with UK consumers spending more than £100m a week on digital entertainment services such as Netflix, Amazon, Spotify and Apple Music in the first half of the year for the first time. UK consumers spent a total of £3.3bn on entertainment products in the first six months of the year, a 4.5% increase compared with a year earlier, as the popularity of subscription music and

Ofcom report highlights scale of challenge broadcasters face from streaming services The scale of the challenge UK broadcasters face in the streaming era has been thrown into stark relief by a new report, which estimates that 34 extra series of the BBC hit Bodyguard – or 14 more Love Islands – would have needed to air last year to make up for the drop in traditional TV viewing as audiences flock to rivals including Netflix, Amazon and YouTube. The report, by the media regulator Ofcom, highlights the huge growth in popularity of streaming services in the UK. The number of subscribers to the three most popular - Netflix, Amazon and Sky’s Now TV - leapt by almost a quarter last year to 19.1m.

Tyler Blevins, 28, the multimillionaire gamer known as Ninja, says he has a deal to stream exclusively at the Microsoft service. He’s quitting Twitch, the Amazon service where he has over 14 million followers. Yes, it’s a big deal.

Tyler Blevins, 28, the multimillionaire gamer known as Ninja, says he has a deal to stream exclusively at the Microsoft service. He’s quitting Twitch, the Amazon service where 12 million fans watch him play Fortnite. Yes, it’s a big deal.

Camera shutter, tap gesture, better speakers and 5.5in screen make for an appealing smart alarm clock Amazon’s latest Echo Show 5 Alexa smart display is smaller, cheaper and has improved privacy, but is a £79.99 5.5in screen with a camera ready to replace your alarm clock in the bedroom? The Show 5 isn’t the first Alexa smart display aimed at being your bedside clock. The

While small firms can’t afford the $700m Amazon is spending, they can send workers to conferences and workshops to acquire skills – and get a tax benefit Amazon has been getting a lot of bad press lately, with workers protesting conditions and wages and the

Back in 1994, in the early days of the world wide web, Amazon was a new online book seller - known only to the relatively small constituency of tech-savvy computer enthusiasts who then used the internet.

Internet sales are growing – and so is the threat of false endorsementsAs many shoppers search for bargains in advance of Amazon’s “Prime Day” sale this week, there is a growing scepticism about how they can judge the products they are thinking of buying. Three-quarters of people read the reviews posted about products and services, but doubts are mounting over the trustworthiness of these reviews. A burgeoning market for fakes has emerged, and experts say consumers must be vigilant.

Turnover in Britain was nearly £2bn yet the company paid just £1.7m in corporation tax. It’s time for Jeff Bezos to cough upAmazon’s boss, Jeff Bezos, makes an easy target for anti-poverty campaigners. He runs a near-trillion-dollar company that pays very little tax. He is personally worth $160bn and makes few charitable donations. So there will be plenty of sympathy across the political spectrum for

Attempt to stop content being buried in on-demand services of Sky and Virgin Media The broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has called for new laws to ensure that shows made by UK broadcasters including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 continue to get top billing on on-demand services such as Sky – but the rules will not apply to Netflix and Amazon. The regulator has recommended that the government bring in legislation to guarantee that the content and streaming services of iPlayer, ITV Hub and All4 are not buried deep in the on-demand services of competitors such as Sky and Virgin Media or through smart TVs such as Samsung.

According to a Guardian survey through Blind, employees are already facing negative consequences or predict problems Technology workers of Chinese descent say that they are experiencing backlash due to the US-China trade war and fears over Huawei, according to a survey commissioned by the Guardian through Blind, an app allowing anonymous workplace communication. “With the trade war against China and especially the Huawei case I feel like a target more and more every day,” an anonymous Amazon employee wrote in a comment on the app, which is popular among technology employees and verifies employment through work emails. “I can’t even feel comfortable about being Chinese because so many Americans see China as a threat now.”

More than 700 companies, including Amazon, Tesco and ExxonMobil, lack transparency, campaign group claims A $10tn (£7.9tn) investor alliance has accused more than 700 companies, including Amazon, Tesco and ExxonMobil, of failing to reveal the full extent of their impact on the climate crisis, water shortages and deforestation. The major global companies, with a combined worth ofmore than $15tn, lack transparency over their effect on the environment, according to the intervention by some of the world’s biggest financial names.

Independent bookshops are thriving because they understand readers’ tastes better than an Amazon algorithmAs global temperatures rise at the rate political standards fall, the news that independent bookshops are reviving gives rare cause for celebration. Last year the number of indies on UK high streets grew for the second year running – by 15 to 883, according to the

UK tax authority spent £11m to use online giant’s web-hosting services in 2018, says report HM Revenue & Customs spent £11m to use Amazon’s web-hosting service last year, more than six times the £1.7m it received in corporation tax from Amazon’s main UK business, according to a new report. The UK tax authority was the second-biggest spender on Amazon services among central government departments, falling just behind the Home Office which spent nearly £16m last year, according to a report published by the GMB trade union.

Sales of printed books have risen and shops are fighting back. As the online threat mounts, UK booksellers – from chains to pop-ups – tell us how they keep afloat Books and bookshops are on the up. Sales of printed books have risen for the

Overhaul business rates and turn town centres into ‘free trade zones’, says Andy Street The former boss of John Lewis has said online retailers such as Amazon should pay more tax and that a solution for struggling town centres would be to turn them into “free trade zones”. Andy Street, who became the

More than €650m worth of new goods destroyed or thrown away each year, says PM’s office France’s prime minister has announced a crackdown on the destruction of unsold or returned consumer products, a move that will affect luxury goods brands as well as online retailers such as Amazon. Edouard Philippe said a ban on destroying non-food goods – including clothes, electrical items, hygiene products and cosmetics – would come into force within the next four years.

TV and film fans have turned to the Silicon Valley giants in place of true British rival Netflix and Amazon made £1.1bn in revenues from UK streaming fans last year, double the amount the UK’s biggest broadcasters were able to make from their own streaming services, highlighting the scale of the missed opportunity of a lack of a true British rival to the Silicon Valley giants. Netflix is estimated to have made £693m in revenues from its 10 million UK subscribers last year, while rival Amazon notched up £400m from an estimated 7.7 million subscribers to its Prime Video service, according to research from media regulator

Tech innovations have driven the drift down in prices – policymakers ignore such forces at their peril Debates about inflation in advanced economies have changed remarkably over the past decades. Setting aside (mis)measurement issues, concerns about debilitatingly high inflation and the excessive power of bond markets are long gone, and the worry now is that excessively low inflation may hinder growth. Moreover, while persistently subdued – and, on

GMB tells shareholders that warehouse workers endure targets that cause suffering Trade unions are lobbying City investors to put pressure on Amazon to improve conditions for its workers in the UK. At a meeting at the TUC’s head office this month the GMB union made presentations, including one from an Amazon employee, to a dozen leading fund managers and pension funds that own stakes in Amazon including Legal & General, Baillie Gifford and Aberdeen Standard.

Amazon, the internet retailing behemoth, is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in the British food delivery app Deliveroo, giving it a huge boost in its international battle with rival Uber Eats.

Governments had to act on Facebook, Google and Amazon – but they could stifle innovation Two years ago, it seemed clear that a combination of factors would lead to increased calls to regulate technology companies, especially the big tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. When that happens, I

One shop sells nothing but buttons, another sells only liquorice, and another is ‘the world’s first textile butcher shop’. In the age of Amazon, it seems the way to thrive is to specialise On the first floor of a nondescript 1,000 sq metre industrial unit in Berlin’s Steglitz district, four workers are cautiously placing pregnant queen ants into test tubes in order to dispatch them across Europe. This is

Jeff Bezos touts results but report, which reveals Amazon tracks and fires workers who miss productivity targets, casts shadow Amazon made a profit of more than $1bn a month for the first three months of the year, the company announced on Thursday. The retail and tech giant reported a profit of $3.6bn for the three months ending 31 March as sales reached $59.7bn. Profits were more than double last year’s and the company has now recorded four straight quarters in a row of record profits.

Company beat sales and profit expectations to join Apple and Amazon in prestigious club Microsoft has become the third publicly listed US company, after Apple and Amazon, to boast a market value of more than $1tn after bumper quarterly results boosted its share price. The company beat sales and profits expectations in the three months to 31 March, thanks in part to its cloud computing business, which signed up major corporate clients over the period.

If the online retail giant has felt some pressure on profits, what price other, less secure, Silicon Valley firms? The march of Amazon and other US tech giants to world domination can sometimes seem unstoppable. Investors who have bought into the Amazon story have rarely been let down either. Amazon’s share price performance since the millennium stands at +2,345%. Last year tech stocks were in overdrive until the autumn, when almost all took a big tumble. But Amazon is still up more than 25% on this time a year ago, and a reading of 90 on its price to earnings ratio – essentially a measure of investors’ hopes for the future – suggests that its stellar growth is expected to continue.

Streaming service, which spent $12bn on original content in 2018, beat analysts exceptions in latest earnings report Netflix added 9.6 million new subscribers in the first three months of the year even as it increased prices and faced stiffer competition from rivals including Amazon, Apple and Hulu. The streaming video service now

Unlikely alliance of free-market libertarians and union-backed activists argue $100m-plus in subsidies handed to retailer are a bad investment for the city Nashville has a way of bringing people together – usually through music. This time it’s through a shared antipathy for the $100m-plus in subsidies this booming city has just handed to Amazon, the world’s most valuable retailer. The ink has barely dried on a deal that the state of Tennessee and the city awarded Amazon and there are now only a few small hurdles remaining before Amazon starts moving in to a downtown office complex planned for Nashville Yards.

We talk to depot staff and drivers who are working in shocking conditions and having their pay docked for minor mistakesThe accident was the final straw. Mark Wright*, a supervisor at an Amazon depot, had called in a delivery driver to cover an absent colleague’s shift. Depot managers ordered the driver to load his consignment of parcels on the kerbside rather than in the warehouse where loading normally takes place. As he heaved a large parcel into the van’s side door, he slipped off the kerb and broke his leg. “It was an accident waiting to happen,” says Wright. “I’d told the manager that it was an unsafe place to load, but under Amazon rules if you’re late for work, you’re not allowed to drive into the warehouse and they marked him as late even though he’d only just been given the shift.” The driver was unable to return to work and his pay ceased from the moment he fell. Wright left his job a few weeks later, citing the intolerable demands placed on drivers by the depot rules.

Sales of CDs continue to fall as fans turn to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music Global music revenues grew at the fastest rate in more than two decades last year, as the streaming revolution more than made up for the plummeting popularity of CDs. Worldwide recorded music revenues surged 9.7% to $19.1bn (£14.6bn) in 2018, the fastest rate of growth since at least 1997 when the Oasis album

The accusations by Gavin de Becker, Mr. Bezos’ longtime security consultant, are the latest twist in a bizarre situation that has also pulled in the largest U.S. tabloid publisher and The Washington Post.

The accusations by Gavin de Becker, Mr. Bezos’s longtime security consultant, are the latest twist in a bizarre situation that has also pulled in the largest U.S. tabloid publisher and The Washington Post.

Christine Lagarde says governments must address corporation taxation concerns The managing director of the International Monetary Fund has joined the growing clamour to further tax tech firms Google, Facebook and Amazon as part of a wider review of “outdated” global corporation tax rules. In a speech in Washington, Christine Lagarde said governments must react to growing concerns that digital companies pay little tax in most countries where they operate, which denyies exchequers vital funds for public services and welfare.

Revenue from Spotify, Amazon and Apple rises as CD sales continue to fall Music streaming services generated more than half of the income earned by record labels in the UK last year, as CD sales continue to plummet. Subscription streaming platforms operated by Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music, made revenues of £468m in the UK last year, 54% of the £865.5m total income for the recorded music industry. It is the first time that subscription streaming revenues, which grew at 35% year-on-year in 2018, have accounted for more than half of total recorded music revenues for labels.

Philip Hammond to promise action on plan to tackle Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple A fresh bid to curb the market power of US tech giants will be signalled by Philip Hammond on Wednesday when he welcomes the findings of an independent review calling for government action to ensure companies including Google, Facebook and Apple face stiffer competition. The chancellor will use his annual spring statement to promise action after a review conducted for the Treasury by Jason Furman, Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser, concluded that the

Study by Mintel also finds that more than 25% of British adults are signed up to Prime Almost 90% of UK shoppers use Amazon and 40% have access to its Prime subscription service, according to research that lays bare the challenge for high street retailers. Most Amazon shoppers visit the online retailer at least once a month and just under a fifth once a week, underlining the retail dominance Amazon has gained. Its core categories of books, DVDs and video games are still the most popular purchases, according to the market research firm Mintel.

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